ALTERNATIVE POLITICS RI Greens target local races BY TIM LEHNERT

On the face of it, the Rhode Island Green Party is in bad shape. The Greens garnered more than 25,000 statewide votes in the 2000 presidential race, but won a mere 1333 tallies in 2004. Local Greens are not discouraged, however, or even surprised, by last November’s results. They maintain that the party is doing well at the local and state levels, something they consider more important than the presidential numbers.

Greg Gerritt, a Providence mayoral candidate in 2002, and secretary of the RI Green Party, is optimistic about the party’s local prospects. He notes that state party co-chair Jeff Toste made a respectable showing in 2004 in the state Senate race for District 5 (west of downtown Providence), and plans to run again. Gerritt, who has no plans to run himself, is encouraged by heightened efforts to increase the number of Green candidates in the state, as well as their chances of being elected.

Environmental matters are the Greens’ bread and butter, but Gerritt says violence remains an important issue for the party. He notes how the Greens vociferously opposed the Iraq war from the outset, unlike the many Democrats who were muddled in their opposition and never declared the war fundamentally wrong. "We have a bipartisan consensus on violence in this country," Gerritt says. While the American people are willing to embrace clean energy and use less oil, he says, the current administration "is a government run by oil business folks who ignore global warming, want higher oil consumption to make more money, and are willing to kill for oil despite the fact that we need to reduce oil consumption."

The Greens’ poor presidential showing last November can be attributed to how the party’s ticket featured two relative unknowns, Texas lawyer David Cobb, and Providence-born Maine resident Pat Lamarche. (After much wrangling, Ralph Nader ultimately ran under the Reform Party banner.) The backlash against Nader from his perceived spoiler role in the 2000 election produced a washout for parties competing with the Democrats for votes, even in "safe" states like Rhode Island.

The spoiler issue remains a source of continual debate for the Greens. Some contend the Democrats and Republicans are twin evils, and that the Greens should simply fight hard, run candidates across the board, and let the chips fall where they may. Others favor running strategically, so as not to give an unintended boost to the Republicans.

Providence City Councilor David Segal, elected to a Ward 1 seat in 2002, favors the latter approach, as well as expanded use of instant runoff voting (IRV), which allows voters to rank candidates; if no candidate obtains a majority, votes are reallocated from the list until one does prevail. The system allows voters to cast a ballot for their preferred candidate, safe in the knowledge that they are not inadvertently aiding their least favorite choice. For now, though, IRV remains about as likely in Rhode Island as the election of a Green governor.